Growth is back for Cisco Systems: The San Jose tech giant on Wednesday reported a dramatic jump in sales and profit from a year ago, while CEO John Chambers announced plans to hire 2,000 to 3,000 people in the coming months.

“We are entering the second phase of the economic recovery,” Chambers told analysts, after reporting that Cisco’s profit rose 23 percent in the quarter that ended Jan. 23, compared with a year ago, while sales rose by 8 percent. The results exceeded the company’s own forecast, as well as analysts’ expectations.

Chambers also said the company expects sales in the current quarter will grow by 23 to 26 percent from a year ago, which would put revenue in the range of $10.1 billion to $10.3 billion.

Analysts said the earnings report and the new forecast are a strong indication that other corporations are starting to spend and invest in big tech projects again, after cutting back on their budgets during the recession. Cisco is the world’s largest seller of computer networking equipment and related hardware used by other big companies around the globe.

“It suggests that the recovery in tech spending will continue into 2010,” said investment analyst Brent Bracelin of Pacific Crest Securities.

While cautioning that it’s still possible for the economy to falter again, Chambers pronounced the quarterly results “outstanding” and said business had improved in a broad range of geographic areas and market segments.

“This would indicate that the recovery from a capital spending perspective is very strong,” he said during a conference call with analysts. The company’s overall product orders were up 11 percent from a year ago, he said, after falling by more than 20 percent just two quarters ago.

Cisco said it earned $1.9 billion net income on revenue of $9.8 billion in its fiscal second quarter that ended last month, compared with $1.5 billion profit on sales of $9.1 billion in the same period a year earlier. Earnings amounted to 32 cents a share, or 40 cents a share after excluding one-time charges.

While consistently profitable, Cisco’s revenue and profit were down in each of the previous four quarters when compared with a year earlier as the recession put a damper on tech spending overall. Cisco said previously that it cut spending and trimmed more than 2,000 jobs in the first part of last year.

But as business began to recover last fall, the company increased its global work force by about 2,100 in the latest quarter, bringing the total to 65,874. Chambers said half of the new employees came from two companies that Cisco acquired, with the rest coming from external hiring.

Chambers said the additional hiring this year will occur in areas across the company but did not provide specifics.

Cisco is the second big tech company to announce hiring plans this year; Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said last week he plans to hire 2,000 people, although he also said about 1,000 jobs will be cut in connection with Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Cisco also sells consumer products, including home routers and digital video cameras, and it recently moved to expand its role as a provider of datacenter equipment, by launching its own line of servers and by partnering with other vendors including EMC and VMware. That means Cisco is increasingly competing directly with other tech giants, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Oracle.

Cisco’s stock closed at $23.07, up 0.2 percent for the day, but it rose an additional 3.6 percent in after-hours trading.

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